Since the beginning of the year, the joomla/virtuemart checkout process would not send an email to the admin. I fixed this by forcing a basic PHP email.

Here’s how:

go into administrator/components/com_virtuemart/classes

edit the ps_checkout.php file:

around line 2007, you will see:

$vendor_mail = vmMail( $shopper_email, $shopper_name, $vendor_email, $vendor_subject, $vendor_mail_Body, $vendor_mail_AltBody, true, null, null, $EmbeddedImages);

after this line, insert this one:
(obviously changing the “insert..” text to your email address)

mail(“INSERT_YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS_HERE”, “Order Placed”, $vendor_mail_Body, “FROM: INSERT_YOUR_ADMIN_EMAIL_ADDRESS_HERE”);

This solved the issue for me. Now, the customers get the email and I also get a copy of the email.